Lessons In Effective Email Marketing – Presidential Elections 2016

‘Emails’ – was included in a recent article, “5 words that explain 2016.” This probably isn’t surprising. If you have been following the presidential elections, you might agree with how Bernie Sanders aptly surmised, “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”

Let’s talk about the effect of emails on this year’s election. Before we lose all your interest, rest assured that we are not going into another relentless analysis of how the Clinton Email scandal, and it’s dizzying coverage, shaped the results of the election. We are instead going to talk about emails that silently changed the course of the election.

Email has become the gatekeeper of our online identity. Think of it this way, how many forms and services do we sign up for by inputting our email? This has made email, if used correctly, one of the most efficient marketing tools of any industry, as is clearly reflected in our survey data.

Despite unprecedented access to sophisticated digital machinery, emails were still a very important tool in the arsenal of almost all candidates. It still stands poised as arguably the fastest, most effective way to reach a large demographic. More importantly, it’s noninvasive. People make a conscious effort to open an email and read through it at a time when it’s convenient to them.

If political campaigns can work with emails through their rigorous and real time TATs (Turn Around Time), we should be learning a thing or two from them. Let’s have a look at the kind of patterns that emerged from the presidential candidates trying to leverage emails to their advantage.

#1 Keeping It Personal

Keeping emails personal happen on many levels. Though many experts think that the presidential candidates missed a lot of opportunities when it came to personalization, they still hit a lot of the right points at a lot of right places.

Both the Clinton and Trump campaigns made sure that their emails appeared to be coming from a specific person, be it the candidates themselves or their surrogates, making them appear to be a personal email. The Trump campaign also used the first name of the recipient to address all emails, following the best practices of email marketing.

Another level of personalization came from using data to micro-target demographics. Data gave both the campaigns a detailed understanding of small groups in demographics. They used it real time to frame their content, for their design and their CTA’s (Call To Action).

#2 Keep Them Guessing

We all know the importance of subject lines and their role in click rates. The campaigns understood this as well. They made sure that most of their emails had subject lines that were intriguing.

For example:

The best Trump performers, during the period of Sept. 20 to Oct. 20, was an email marketing campaign with the subject line, “American Won Last Night,” deployed on Oct. 10. Following the second debate, the emails reached an audience of 2.4 million, with an inbox rate of 61 percent and a 28 percent read rate.

The best-deployed email marketing campaign for the Hillary Campaign, between Sept. 20 and Oct. 20., read in the subject line: “Sorry to send this.” Launched hours after the leaked tapes of Trump’s groping remarks, it reached 2.5 million people and produced an inbox rate of 90 percent and a read rate of 24 percent.

A noticeable strategy being used, particularly by the Trump Campaign, involves evoking a sense of urgency.

An article on not imperative notes, “Per week, 40% of Trump emails referenced the number of days left until the election. This is further augmented by use of emphatic subject lines such as, ‘We’re Being Overrun’ and ‘I’m fighting for YOU.’”

Here is some valuable insight from the overall email marketing campaigns of elections 2016.